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The Start of Chicago’s Maritime History – The I&M Canal 
by Ron Vasile

Few today think of the Illinois and Michigan Canal when considering Chicago’s maritime history, yet the canal is arguably one of the most important stories in Illinois history.  The idea for the canal goes back to the first European explorers to the Midwest.  In 1674 Louis Jolliet wrote that a short canal at Chicago would connect the waters of Lake Michigan with those of the Illinois River, and ultimately with the Mississippi River.  It took over 150 years before Jolliet’s dream became a reality.

Since the birth of the new nation, American leaders had recognized the urgent need for a network of “internal improvements” to ease the problem of continental transportation.  The success of the Erie Canal, completed in 1825, marked a period of intensive canal building in the U. S.  Indeed, the years from 1790-1850 have been characterized as the Canal era.  This chapter in our nation’s history has been largely overlooked, as most historians have focused on the railroads as the prime force behind America’s development.

Construction of the I&M Canal and the sale of canal lands brought thousands of people streaming into northeastern Illinois in the mid to late 1830s, and those who braved the hazards of this frontier outpost quickly realized the necessity of improving transportation.  Contemporary accounts of stagecoach travel emphasize the perils and discomforts of traversing rutted paths that passed for roads.  Much of the region consisted of wet prairie, and spring rains and melting snow turned the trails into impassable quagmires.  In 1847 a reporter took a trip by stagecoach along the route of the soon to be completed I&M Canal.  He noted that the ride “was as uncomfortable as any enemy, if we had one, could desire.  We made progress at the rate of less than three miles an hour; the weather was intensely hot; and not a breath of air was stirring; the horses and carriage raised any quantity of dust, which, of course, rose only high enough to fill the carriage.”[i]   Another traveler noted that a long stagecoach ride “left one more dead than alive.”[ii]  Water-borne travel promised a new level of comfort and convenience.

Thus, few events in Chicago’s history were more eagerly anticipated than the opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal.  The most massive public works project ever attempted in the young state of Illinois, digging began on the 4^th of July in 1836.  Many hoped the canal could be completed in a few years, but in 1837 the nation suffered its first major Depression, and by 1840 Illinois teetered towards bankruptcy.  Work on the canal largely ceased until New York, English, and French investors ponied up $1.6 million to jump start the stalled project in 1845.   It took twelve years of on again, off again labor to construct the canal, but the 96 mile long waterway, running from Bridgeport (then a suburb of Chicago) to LaSalle, finally opened in April of 1848.[iii]

Largely overlooked, however, is the fact that for the first five years of its existence the I&M also served as a means of travel for thousands of passengers.  The story of packet boats on the I&M Canal illuminates a forgotten chapter in Illinois’s transportation history, but it also sheds light on several national stories.  The California Gold Rush, a deadly cholera epidemic, and the Underground Railroad all loomed large in the national consciousness in the years 1848-1852, and the I&M Canal played a role in all three.   The canal most directly influenced yet another remarkable nineteenth century story, the dramatic rise of Chicago as a national crossroads.  Indeed, no history of Chicago and northeastern Illinois is complete without an understanding of the early years of the I&M Canal.

As on other canals, horses provided the motive power to pull the boats. (Mules were used to haul the 150-ton freight boats).  A month before the canal’s opening a Chicago newspaper ran an advertisement seeking 80 horses.  “The horses, being for Canal use, must be from five to ten years old, sound and kind, of good size, smart and good travelers.”[iv]  They received daily training for canal work on Chicago’s principal streets, hitched to a sled.[v]  In a “novel parade,” twenty-three fully equipped three-horse teams were driven in a procession through Chicago. [vi]  Boat captains and crews, as well as furniture, came via Buffalo, New York on the Erie Canal.

The I&M officially opened on April 10, 1848, and many Chicago residents made the trek to suburban Bridgeport to see the arrival of the canal boat General Fry.  The throng cheered as a towboat guided her to the waters of Lake Michigan, with newspapers trumpeting the Wedding of the Waters, namely those of Lake Michigan with the mighty Mississippi River.[vii]   Passenger service began later in the month with the departure of the St. Louis on April 26.  The following day several canal commissioners took a packet for the western terminus at LaSalle. [viii]

On its completion in 1848, the I&M Canal created a new transportation corridor. By connecting the waters of the Illinois River with those of Lake Michigan (hence the name, hereafter referred to as the I&M Canal), the canal created an all-water route from New York to New Orleans, with Chicago as the crucial mid-point.  Travelers from the eastern U. S. took the Erie Canal to Buffalo, New York, where steamboats brought them through the Great Lakes to Chicago.  Transferring to canal boats, a 96-mile trip on the I&M Canal brought them to LaSalle/Peru.  Here people boarded river steamers bound for St. Louis and New Orleans.  During the years of the California Gold Rush many emigrants traveled part of the journey on the I&M Canal.  During the nation-wide cholera epidemic of 1849, the disease came to Chicago via passengers on the I&M Canal.

The Illinois &Michigan Canal ushered in a new era in trade and travel for the nation. The I&M Canal, opened 23 years after the Erie Canal, was the last of the great U. S. shipping canals of the nineteenth century. Following up on the Erie’s success, the I&M was the final link in a chain of waterways that helped fuel the nation’s economic growth.  It is no exaggeration to state that “The construction and operation of the I&M Canal from 1836 to 1933 in northeast Illinois tells one of the most significant stories in the transportation history of the United States.”[ix] The canal opened the floodgates to an influx of new commodities, new people, and new ideas.  The I&M, and the railroad and highway lines that soon paralleled its connection between Chicago and La Salle, became the great passageway to the American West.  At a stroke, the opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal gave Illinois the key to mastery of the American mid-continent.

Illinois’ most beloved figure, Abraham Lincoln, took a ride on a canal packet, and Lincoln later trumpeted the effects of the I&M Canal in the halls of Congress.  While acknowledging that the I&M Canal was entirely within the confines of one state, he noted that its benefits extended far beyond those borders, reducing the cost of transporting goods, thus benefiting both buyers and sellers.  “Nothing is so local as not to be of some general benefit,” wrote the future President. “the benefits of an improvement are by no means confined to the particular locality of the improvement itself.”

The I&M Canal is nationally significant for many reasons.  In 1827 the Federal Government gave the State of Illinois nearly 300,000 acres of prime farmland, the sale of which would finance construction of a canal.  The I&M Canal shares with the Wabash Canal in neighboring Indiana the distinction of being the first American canals to receive federal land grant toward its financing.  This precedent is of great historical interest, as it later served as the model for the first federal land grant to support a railroad-the Illinois Central Railroad.

The canal also had international implications.  In 1843, with construction of the I&M Canal stalled due to the State of Illinois’s near bankruptcy, investors from New York, England and France put up $1.6 million to complete the canal.

The results of the canal were far-reaching.  Farmers now had a reliable way to get their crops to market, thus allowing them to open up new acreage for cultivation.  The digging of limestone, coal, sand and gravel shifted into high gear, as the canal made it economically feasible to quarry and ship large quantities to fast growing Chicago.  Exploiting these natural resources in turn spurred new industries, especially the manufacture of glass, bricks, hydraulic cement, and zinc.

While the canal enjoyed only five years free of railroad competition, these years were absolutely critical in launching Chicago on its path to urban greatness, and in spawning a dozen other towns along its banks that would soon industrialize and help consolidate the western end of the American Manufacturing Belt in northern Illinois. The opening of the Illinois & Michigan canal radically reduced the costs of transferring goods, particularly grain, lumber, and merchandise, between Midwestern prairies and the East via the Great Lakes trading system.  For the first time, the canal allowed goods from the southern U. S., including sugar, salt, molasses, tobacco, and oranges, to be shipped to Chicago.  By cutting travel times, the I&M Canal also precipitated a new era of travel for people from the south to the north, and vice versa.

For decades the canal more than held its own in competing with the railroads for carrying freight.  Over a million tons were shipped on the canal in 1881.  However, the canal was simply too small, and the opening of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in 1900 led to a dramatic decrease in use of the I&M Canal.  Despite a brief resurgence during World War I, the canal was limited to mostly recreational boats before finally closing in 1933, with the opening of the Illinois Waterway.  A portion of the canal was paved over in the 1960s to form a part of the Stevenson Expressway, and in 1963 the canal became a National Historic Landmark.  By 1984 the canal became the focal point of the nation’s first national heritage corridor.  The old towpath has been converted to a hiking and biking trail, attracting thousands of visitors each year.  And plans are afoot to build and float a replica packet boat at Lock 14 in LaSalle, so that people can once again experience a sense of what it was like to ride an I&M Canal packet.  This would bring the I&M Canal full circle from its origins over 150 years ago.

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